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Within the last week, I’ve seen several blogs pleading for people to support Power-Con. I’m all for conventions and celebrations of Fandom but it seems like every time He-Man is attached to something in the realm of any media, someone is begging and pleading for something. I’m also all for drumming up support for a worthy cause but it seems like this may be the end of the line for He-Man. It’s had a good run over the last decade or more with the 200X revival, the Four Horsemen Studios, NECA, the Classics line, and successful years of Power-Con. That’s all stuff to be proud of especially those involved at the top, but as the image says “all toy lines must end”.

I love supporting Fandoms, even when they are things that aren’t my interest. I give away My Little Pony figures, give away tickets to conventions to people who’d enjoy it more than I would, and I cover a wide range of toys and collectibles on my website. I liked He-Man when I was growing up, I did like Thundercats better but everyone seems to have better memories of He-Man for some reason. In the passing years the fans have been wanting a new He-Man cartoon and figure line but when it comes time to support it, they get fickle about pulling out their wallets. But it’s a great struggle, Mattel pulls support from their lines due to lack of support from the fans and fans pull their support due to lack of product released by Mattel. It’s a vicious cycle but in the end it boils down to best business practices in favor of Mattel. Granted, Mattel has shown their ass on a couple of instances with the He-Man lines so maybe the fans wavering support is warranted.

(remember this bullshit?)

Those in charge of Power-Con have not wowed me over the last few years. There’s been a lot of in-fighting between different groups, the openly trashing of Emiliano Santalucia, the main people in charge of the website heman.org treating the Fandom like their own personal sandbox (which is fine by my account but many people haven’t felt like it’s fair), and the constant asking for monetary support to keep things afloat. You’re not good enough to be one of us but do you have some money to spare to help us keep this place up and running is a paradox worthy of a thousand face-palms. I’ve enjoyed my visits but after they trashed Emiliano, things took a turn for the worse. Power-Con has had the feeling of a private party you’re begrudgingly invited to.

(but to be clear, this guy is still a dumb ass)

Conventions aren’t that hard to put together, the hardest part is securing and paying celebrity talent to show up. I won’t go into long details but even a complete moron can run a show and break even in the end, even if that means putting your own money into the show and paying yourself back from the receipts. If you’re any good at what you do with conventions you can make a decent living off of them. With the poor planning by moving the convention across the country to New York from California and not opting for having TMNT be a part of the convention (in a movie year no less) are two of the many reason I’d point my finger to if the convention fails.

(I just like this photo, all credit to the artist.)

In the end, He-Man is a fringe interest. It’s a strong fringe interest but still not strong enough to carry itself like Star Wars or one of the major comic book stories out there. I don’t like seeing things fail that bring people happiness and generate a buzz for anything to do with toys or anything 80s or 90s. But in the end it won’t be the fan’s fault if Power-Con goes broke, it’ll be those who made the bad decisions in the first place.

At the end of July, well known 80s nostalgia website 8-Bit Zombie debuted their Summer releases. Those not familiar with 8-Bit Zombie should really go check them out; the site is full of original artwork plastered on all kinds of merchandise from t-shirts to stickers and hats and posters. Think of it and they’ve probably made a joke on it; Nintendo, cartoons like Thundercats, GI Joe and He-Man, kitschy cult movies and TV shows. They even parodied Garbage Pail Kids, which is something like a parody within a parody inception bullshit that makes my head hurt just trying to figure out that equation. Anyways, the guys at 8-Bit Zombie have always been have always been on my watch list since they were mentioned on x-entertainment about a year ago. Since then the artwork done by the guys has had my full attention, this is the kind of thing I can get in deep with because I love all the stupid stuff from the 80s with a strange passion. It’s somewhere between love-hate and snuggle fuck if I had to verbalize my infatuation with that era.

Since following them on the social media feeds, I found out they were making a limited edition action figure. With everything else I loved about their site I knew I’d have to buy one when the first pictures showed up. Thrashor, based on their t-shirt design from the previous summer had been realised as a legit fully sculpted figure. What’s Thrashor? Thrashor is a He-Man-esque knock off designed in true 8-Bit Zombie fashion. Snapback hat, blue jeans vest, high tops with mid calf socks, Nintendo Power Glove on the right hand complete with He-Man pageboy hairstyle encompassing his zombie facial features and Masters of the Universe loincloth this toy was sure to be a big hit in my mind. I know I got up an hour before it was scheduled to drop and I hadn’t done this in years, I don’t get up early for internet exclusives but I had set my mind on getting this toy come hell or high water.

I refreshed the page till he popped up and in retrospect I feel like I should have bought a second one because it’s so rad. I must have been there at the right time, the first run is limited to 50 pieces and mine is number 4 of 50 (my buddy one county north of me got number 5) and when it arrived I felt like a kid, no joke. I hadn’t anticipated the arrival of a new toy like this in forever, the box was stamped all over with previous designs from 8-Bit Zombie, images like My Pet Monster and Madballs with the Power Glove and Ruppies from Legend of Zelda. Inside Thrashor lay inside of a poly-bag filled with stickers and a sharp looking logo card. Under Thrashor was another little baggie with a handful of more stickers, 80s trading cards, 3 8-Bit Zombie buttons and a red Buffalo Man from M.U.S.C.L.E. Thrashor wasn’t going to last long being mint in package, toys were meant to be opened and opening is exactly what was going to fucking happen.

Freed from his baggie, Thrashor stands 5 inches tall and from what I can tell is made in two parts and joined at the waist. He’s a very pleasing color, a sickly putrid slime green that you would see on an early Nickelodeon game show before they started to suck. There’s no articulation but if you’re a crafty motherfucker you can find places to separate the figure and make him move with a little ingenuity. He comes with a scaled skateboard in the same awesome green color with a really bad ass looking 8-bit Skeletor skull and crossbones motif. The sculpt is just this side of totally amazing and the price was 100% right. Thrashor retails for around $50 which is a steal for an art toy like this, most art toys start at $90 and get progressively more expensive. I always been at those crossroads when getting into designer toys, I love some of these great designs from artist I admire but I can’t possibly afford to toy hunt for vintage toys and buy their stuff too. I think it’s just great because we have aspirations of creating our own toy and it proves they can be made affordable enough that everyone has a chance at them.